Dear all,
The Electoral Commission is set to release it's final recommendations to the public at a meeting at the Town Hall on the 11th January at 9:30am. They will be presenting to the Privileges and Procedures Committee the day before.
I will be at the meeting, open to be impressed, but ready to criticise if need be. I'd urge as many that can get the morning off work to come to the meeting too.
I'm not going to make any concrete predictions of what will be in the report because I doubt it will be radically different to the preliminary report. But I had heard rumours about a change to the format for the referendum, but looking at the language used in their press release, it appears that may not be the case. We'll have to wait and see.
The format of the referendum will be crucial to how progressives should approach the subject.
The most disappointing thing they could do, will be to have not changed their mind about having a two question referendum. As I and many others who are not affiliated with Reform Jersey have said, two questions makes it virtually impossible to back the reforms, because our votes could end up backing a result in the second question by the result we voted against in the first question. This would flaw the entire process and would mean having to campaign against the whole thing. If the referendum is a single question, then we can campaign positively, which is what we want to do.
So to decide how we act once we know the questions and the exact proposals, we will need a meeting to co-ordinate a strategy.
Reform Jersey is going to be doing a group meeting of our activists in the next week or so. If you are someone that has agreed with what we have been doing/ saying so far and want to contribute, please feel free to send me your email address (I will not publish it) and I can add you to our mailing list so you know when the meetings are and when you can come and be a part of it all.
Many thanks,
Sam
Do you have a link to the press release please?
ReplyDeleteSure thing -
Deletehttp://www.electoralcommission.je/2013/01/04/launch-of-commissions-final-report-13th-january-2013/
The Final Report of the Electoral Commission as presented at the Town Hall on Friday 11 January 2013 can be viewed on www.tomgruchy.blogspot.com by those who want to see it again or have not seen it at all zzzzzz
ReplyDeleteWell if the lefties are going for A I will be going for B.
ReplyDeleteI want a cut in overall States Members because we have far too much crap in there right now from rotten boroughs.
Ignoring the inherently undemocratic element of your argument by suggesting it is somehow an issue of left vs right...
DeleteIt is incredibly ironic to complain about rotten boroughs whilst supporting the retention on the Constables.
The single member Parish constituencies are the greatest rotten boroughs of them all and produce the uncontested elections and safe seats. Option A is the only option that gets rid of rotten boroughs.
You do your side of the argument a huge disservice by making petty comments about lefties. Plenty of decent and honest right wingers will be voting for Option A because they realise it is the most democratic.
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ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment. Definitely a good point that if I want to stand for election (I want to one day, we'll see about the next one though) I have to conduct myself properly in this campaign, and I'm going to do my best.
ReplyDeleteBut let's not forget that Lyndon Farnham campaigned against the reduction in Senators, then stood as one.
But my campaign has always been about objective principles of democracy which remain the same no matter if I stand or not, and that I've thought ever since I was 16 years old.
You will have a lot of competition if you do stand because you are certainly not the only one.
ReplyDeleteThat's what elections are meant to be like, isn't it?
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